What Do Honey Bees Collect: Bee Pollen Collection Tap here to give us a call: For service & immediate attention Call 844-514-3980 What Do Honey Bees Collect? Honey bees collect pollen and nectar as food for the entire colony, and as they do, they pollinate plants. Nectar stored within their stomachs is passed from one worker to the next until the water within it diminishes. At this point, the nectar becomes honey, which workers store in the cells of the honeycomb. Although the main diet of honey bees is comprised of honey and pollen, they collect other liquids and juices from plant and fruit exudates as well. If they encounter insects that secrete honeydew, honey bees collect these liquids and store them as honey. However, when there is no pollen, nectar or honeydew available, honey bees may also collect and store plant spores and dusty animal feed as they would nectar or pollen. Honey bees have a wide range of nutritional requirements, including vitamins, minerals, lipids, proteins and carbohydrates. Honey bees need these nutrients for taking care of their young, the development of young workers and the overall survival of a the colony.

Queens, males, workers and larvae require vitamin B complex and vitamin C for proper growth and development. Honey bees also collect proteins from plant pollen, which they bring back to their nest. Male honey bees obtain protein from the secretions of young workers combined with honey or pollen. Queens and honey bee larvae collect their protein requirements from royal jelly secreted by those same young workers. As young honey bees mature, their need for protein decreases and they depend upon carbohydrates and sugar, or lipids, for the majority of their diet. Honey and nectar collected by bees contains both sugar and carbohydrates, which produce energy. This energy is converted to body fat and is stored for future use during cold weather. Honey bees obtain necessary vitamins from royal jelly, pollen and various microorganisms within the hive. If worker bees collect and store significant amounts of pollen, a colony has no need to seek out alternate protein sources. Honey bees collect pollen and nectar as food for the entire colony, and as they do, they pollinate plants. Nectar stored within their stomachs is passed from one worker to the next until the water within it diminishes. At this point, the nectar becomes honey, which workers store in the cells of the honeycomb.

Although the main diet of honey bees is comprised of honey and pollen, they collect other liquids and juices from plant and fruit exudates as well. If they encounter insects that secrete honeydew, honey bees collect these liquids and store them as honey. However, when there is no pollen, nectar or honeydew available, honey bees may also collect and store plant spores and dusty animal feed as they would nectar or pollen. Honey bees have a wide range of nutritional requirements, including vitamins, minerals, lipids, proteins and carbohydrates. Honey bees need these nutrients for taking care of their young, the development of young workers and the overall survival of a the colony. Queens, males, workers and larvae require vitamin B complex and vitamin C for proper growth and development. Honey bees also collect proteins from plant pollen, which they bring back to their nest. Male honey bees obtain protein from the secretions of young workers combined with honey or pollen. Queens and honey bee larvae collect their protein requirements from royal jelly secreted by those same young workers. As young honey bees mature, their need for protein decreases and they depend upon carbohydrates and sugar, or lipids, for the majority of their diet.

Honey and nectar collected by bees contains both sugar and carbohydrates, which produce energy. This energy is converted to body fat and is stored for future use during cold weather. Honey bees obtain necessary vitamins from royal jelly, pollen and various microorganisms within the hive. If worker bees collect and store significant amounts of pollen, a colony has no need to seek out alternate protein sources. Pollen collection by honey bees - Honey Bee Suite Honey Bee Suite Pollen collection by honey bees Pollen collection by honey bees While we normally think of honey bees collecting nectar , an average-size colony may bring in 100 pounds of pollen in a season. Pollen is an essential part of the honey bee diet, providing a wide range of nutrients including protein, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, and minerals. Although a tough outer coating protects the pollen from environmental stressors, honey bees have enzymes in their digestive tract that split the grains apart at a weak point. The interior is then digested and the empty husks are excreted. Most of the pollen is eaten by nurse bees. They use the nutrition absorbed from it to secrete royal jelly from their hypopharyngeal glands. The jelly is fed to young larvae, including workers, drones and queens.

After about three days the jelly is mixed with bee bread—a mixture of whole pollen, honey, and enzymes—and fed to the workers and drones until they spin their cocoons. The queens receive a steady diet of royal jelly throughout their development. Most bees collect just pollen or just nectar on any trip, but a few carry both at the same time. The pollen is stuffed into hairy receptacles on their hind legs called corbiculae. A single bee can carry about half her own body weight in pollen. Once back at the hive, the workers stuff the pollen into an awaiting cell. Unlike nectar-carrying bees, pollen-carrying bees have to off-load it themselves. In addition to depositing the pellets from their sacks, they may also groom away any pollen that is stuck to their bodies. The pollen is stored in cells at the perimeter of the brood nest, forming a ring around it. During the brood rearing season, the pollen is stored for only a few days. During the winter it is stored for much longer. Honey bees usually forage on only one kind of flower on any single trip. This is nature’s way of assuring that plants are cross-pollinated.

So a bee going to blackberries, keeps going to blackberries until there are no more blackberry flowers, then she will switch to something else. Honey bees collect pollen even from plants that don’t provide nectar, such as corn. In corn-growing regions, pesticide-contaminated corn pollen is suspected of causing severe health problems within the hive. Rusty Bee Facts & Control - How to Identify & Get Rid of Bees Appearance / Identification What Do Bees Look Like? Found globally, bees are winged insects of the order Hymenoptera, super-family Apoidea. There are more than 20,000 recorded bee species. Megachile pluto, the largest of these creatures, is reported to be 3.9 cm long, while Perdita minima, the most diminutive of bees, are shorter than 2 mm long. Bees can be black or brown with red, yellow or lustrous blue stripes. Behavior, Diet & Habits While some bees are solitary, species such as honey bees and bumble bees are tremendously social. Bee colonies are comprised of three castes: the queen bee, infertile female worker bees and male drones.

The queen mates and lays eggs for the span of her life. Honey bee queens can live up to five years, though most average a lifespan of two to three years. Male drones exist solely to fertilize the queen and die soon after having fulfilled their task. Female worker bees perform a multitude of tasks necessary to the survival of the hive. As a result of their constant laboring, their average life span is usually a mere six weeks. Reproduction All bees are hairy, a crucial trait for pollen collection. Flowers and flourishing vegetation often attract bees, and there is no insect as important as the bee when it comes to pollination. Many female bee species have rows of bristles on their hind legs which form a hollow basket. When the bee lands on a flower, pollen grains are combed into the hollow basket and bristles. Cross-pollination occurs when the displaced grains of pollen are distributed to the fertile pistils of other flowers as the bee alights upon them. Although only females are able to transfer pollen, all bees are able to sip the nectar from flowers using a tonguelike organ. This nectar is their primary source of energy.

Pollen is sustenance for both adult and larval bees, as it contains protein and other nutrients necessary to their survival. Bees possess an organ that converts nectar into honey, which is collected, depending on the species, inside the hive or bee colony. Bee Swarms The most well-documented and encountered bee swarms are those of honey bees. Typically, honey bee swarms are not a major threat, unless when dealing with Africanized honey bees. The bees do not have a nest or young and, therefore, are less defensive. However, they will sting if provoked. Bee swarming typically occurs in colonies that are thriving and with robust populations. Weak colonies of bees may not swarm until they become stronger and larger in population. Bee colonies may become weak due to starvation, disease or failing queens. Several factors can contribute to the occurrence of a swarm, such as seasonal changes and overcrowding. Swarming involves a contingent of workers and a queen departing the original colony. The swarm typically gathers at a resting site, often in a tree, after leaving the colony. Scouts are sent to location a new location, such as in a log or other cavity.

Once a suitable location is found, the swarm will relocate to the site and begin to nest. Two kinds of bee swarms occur: primary and secondary. The queen bees lead primary swarms, which include a larger number of workers acting to protect the egg-laying queen. Secondary swarms are led by several virgin female bees and as a result, these swarms are half the size of the primary swarm and do not occur as often. Control While bees can benefit the environment in many ways, it is inconvenient and possibly dangerous to let a bee hive thrive near your home. It is important to properly identify the particular species living near your home, as bees are often mistaken for wasps due to their similar physical characteristics. There are different elimination processes for wasps and bees, so effective treatment relies upon proper identification. When using any method of bee control, it is also necessary to know effective application strategies, as well as the limitations and dangers associated with each method. In many regions, special licenses are required to treat infestations. The only way to rid your home of bees is to remove the hive entirely. This precarious task requires the correct tools and strategy. For safety and efficiency purposes, a pest control expert should be consulted before any bee control technique is attempted.

The Case of the Vanishing Honey Bee: Pesticides and the Perfect Crime | Earthjustice The Case of The Vanishing Bees Pesticides & The Perfect Crime: In the widespread bee die-offs, bees often just vanish. One beekeeper calls it the Perfect Crime—no bodies, no murder weapon, no bees. What's happening to the bees? Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice On a fine June morning two years ago, at a Target store outside Portland, Oregon, customers arrive to a startling sight: the parking lot was covered with a seething mat of bumblebees, some staggering around, most already dead, more raining down from above. The die-off lasted several days. It didn't take long to figure out that the day before a pest-control company had sprayed a powerful insecticide on surrounding Linden trees to protect them from aphids; but nobody warned the bees to stay away. In the end, an estimated 50,000 bumblebees perished. The tragedy at Target wiped out as many as 300 bumblebee colonies of bees no longer available to pollinate nearby trees and flowers.

The deadly pesticide is one of a fairly new family known as the neonicotinoids—“neonics” for short—developed a decade or so ago to replace organophosphates and carbamates, which are also highly toxic but dissipate far more quickly. Learn how "neonics" are turning the sweet lives of bees sour. View Infographic » Scores of plants—fruits, vegetables, ornamentals—are sprayed with neonics. The chemical penetrates the leaves and is taken up by the plant’s vascular system, turning the plant poisonous to insects eating the leaves, pollen and nectar. Alternatively, the plant’s seeds are soaked or the soil is treated with the chemical, with the same result. This is convenient for keeping beetles off your roses. It is lethal for bees and other pollinators. And even if it doesn’t kill directly, as happened at the Target lot, sub-lethal doses interfere with the bees’ immune systems and make them vulnerable to pests. They can also damage the bees’ ability to navigate back to the hive. Several of the neonics, incidentally, are made by Bayer, the same Bayer that made the aspirin in your medicine cabinet.

Bayer is a German company; yet, since 2013, neonics may not be used on bee-attractive crops in Germany or any other country in the European Union. This prohibition on use in the EU is a manifestation of what’s known as the Precautionary Principle, a fancy way of saying “Look before you leap.” In the United States we do it backwards: Chemicals are deemed innocent until proven guilty, sometimes with disastrous results. Bees working in Portland, Maine. View photos » Jason P. Smith / Earthjustice Consider the Honeybee She has been domesticated by humans for some thirteen millennia. She is the only creature besides us who manufactures food for humans. She stings only in self-defense. She pollinates a substantial fraction of the plants humans consume. One calculation has it that every third bite of food you eat was pollinated by a bee. The use of ‘she’ here is deliberate. All worker bees are female, as is the queen. The only guys are the drones, a fraction of the total in a hive that has sixty to a hundred thousand individuals. The drones’ only job is to impregnate the queen, which may sound like a cushy gig but he dies in the act.

Come fall, the remaining drones are unceremoniously evicted from the hive to save the precious winter resources for the worker bees. Domesticated bees are around two thirds of the total bee population in the world, the rest are wild. Butterflies pollinate too, and other insects, and hummingbirds, even bats in the tropics. In the United States, Europe, and elsewhere domesticated bees are a major player in agriculture. The population of bees, domestic and wild, fluctuates considerably from year to year. Drought will reduce the amount of wild food the bees need to survive. Storms can wipe out colonies. Natural diseases can ravage populations. But bee colonies are resilient and can bounce back from adversity. At least it used to be that way, until the winter/spring of 2006/2007. Colony Collapse Disorder Takes Hold In that season, the die-off of domesticated bees was so bad bee researchers coined a new phrase: Colony Collapse Disorder. Where the normal annual loss of colonies ran around 10 percent, that year it was over 30 percent, with some beekeepers losing more than 80 percent. And even those stats underestimate reality.

Jeff Anderson, a beekeeper in Minnesota and California points out that the official statistics from the federal Department of Agriculture counts only wintertime die-offs, but in the new bee-unfriendly world there are die-offs all year round: Now he loses half or more of his bees in most years. Other beekeepers have similar stories. Beekeeper Jeff Anderson takes a quiet moment during the California cherry bloom. Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice And what makes these die-offs different is that frequently the bees just vanish. A beekeeper will open a hive to find only brood—developing bees—and a queen, maybe a few drones. The worker bees have disappeared. Anderson calls this the Perfect Crime—no bodies, no murder weapon, no bees. One prevailing theory is that a chemical has damaged the bees’ ability to find their way home; they simply get lost, run out of gas and die. Bill Rhodes, a former professional football player turned beekeeper, lives in Umatilla, Florida, where his bees pollinate citrus orchards. In the summers his bees go to North Dakota or Wisconsin to prepare for winter. In the spring he trucks his bees to California’s Central Valley where they help pollinate almond orchards.

Beekeeping is a huge business—it takes an estimated million and a half hives to pollinate the almonds each year, producing a crop worth $6 billion give or take, twice what California’s wine industry is worth. A major fraction of all commercial bee hives in the U.S. make the journey to the almond orchards every year. Beekeeper Bill Rhodes in a Florida citrus orchard. Melissa Lyttle / Earthjustice Rhodes started noticing some problems about 10 years ago. The bees simply weren’t behaving the way they should. At first he thought, he was just a “piss-poor beekeeper,” but soon he knew that wasn’t right. Something had changed in the bees’ lives. In 2004, he trucked 16 semi-trailer loads of bees to California. “I got paid for two.” The bees just weren’t performing, which was as bad for the orchardists as it was for the beekeepers, not to mention the consumers of almonds. Rhodes phoned a friend in the pest control business and learned about a chemical called imidacloprid that was used on termites. “The termite becomes disoriented. It lowers its immune system.

Viruses will kill him. I also learned that the stuff was used on sunflowers. Sunflowers were the last thing to bloom in South Dakota where my bees had been for the summer. It was suddenly starting to make sense.” Zac Browning raises bees in Idaho and North Dakota and, like many of his colleagues, trucks them to California in the spring when almond orchards are in bloom. He outlines a phenomenon that has combined with pesticides and other bee hazards to make life extremely difficult: the conversion of bee-friendly areas—or as Browning calls them, “beetopias”—to vast swaths of industrial soybean and corn fields. Both soybean and corn are almost exclusively genetically modified to be resistant to the deluge of pesticides sprayed on the fields to kill weeds. Corn and soy provide very little food for bees even without all the poisons. Browning describes yet another problem: “In North Dakota a calm day is a 20-mile-an-hour sustained wind,” he says. The herbicides are sprayed on huge fields. They drift all along the periphery of the field, across the road ditches, next to the waterways, and “everywhere imaginable where bee forage would be. The bees are starving.

The herbicide kills all the natural forage, and then the bees are concentrated only on crops that have insecticide applied to them.” Erin MacGregor-Forbes tends to her bees in Maine. Jason P. Smith / Earthjustice Erin MacGregor-Forbes is an accountant in Portland, Maine, who raises bees for fun and a little profit. She is also a serious student of bee politics and bee science. What worries her most is the fact that many of the plants you buy at Home Depot or another big supplier have been treated with neonics. “Homeowners are planting flowers in their yards thinking they’re helping bees and they’re basically planting poison plants,” MacGregor-Forbes says. The phenomenon holds true for lawns as well: Lawn fertilizers frequently contain weed-killing substances. Bees don’t care about lawns, but the chemical will persist in the soil for three years, so if someone tears out a lawn and plants flowers or vegetables, those will be poisonous to bees. Susan Kegley, a self-described rookie beekeeper, is a PhD chemist and head of the Pesticide Research Institute in Berkeley.

She has dug into data collected by the federal Department of Agriculture and the USGS, and has been helping Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie as digs into the law surrounding pesticides and bees. Her charts are dramatic and stunning. As pesticide use has soared, honey production has plummeted. Likewise, as massive new plantings of corn and soy have blanketed the upper Midwest, honey production has fallen as bee deaths have climbed. Chemist Susan Kegley, who heads the Pesticide Research Institute in Berkeley, CA, shares scientific expertise with Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie, who is leading the challenge against the EPA’s approval of the bee-killing pesticide sulfoxaflor. View photos » Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice A New Indictment On May 9, 2014, the Harvard School of Public Health released a chilling new study suggesting that even small amounts of neonics can significantly harm honeybee colonies and cause mass wintertime die offs. In the study, the Harvard scientists found that hives of bees exposed to two forms of neonics were much more vulnerable to Colony Collapse Disorder than unexposed hives.

“We demonstrated again in this study that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering CCD in honey bee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter,” said lead study author Chensheng (Alex) Lu of Harvard in a statement. And So To Court The law known as FIFRA, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, is supposed to protect people, bees, and other wildlife from dangerous chemicals. It has never worked all that well, in part because the companies seeking permission to get chemicals to market are the entities who do the lab tests and field tests of the chemicals, then submit their findings to the EPA for product approval. This is clearly a process with ample opportunity for abuse. Using inadequate science, the EPA approved a neonic made by Dow called “sulfoxaflor” for use on a wide variety of crops in early 2013. Earthjustice, which has been involved in successful efforts to protect people and the environment from dangerous chemicals for nearly 40 years, is currently representing the beekeeping industry in a lawsuit against the EPA for its approval of sulfoxaflor.

In their case, Earthjustice attorneys Greg Loarie and Janette Brimmer cite EPA studies that found that the chemical is “very highly toxic” to honeybees and the EPA’s own risk assessment, which concedes that the “absence of incident [reports] cannot be construed with absence of incidents.” Case in point: Dow cites an example when sulfoxaflor was used on cotton to kill a new pest called the Tarnished Plant Bug with no reports of bee death. Susan Kegley points out that there were no reports of death because many years earlier, in the early 2000s, a different pesticide had already succeeded in eradicating both weevils and the bees from the cotton belt. Many bees perished, and any beekeeper who wanted to keep his bees alive had already moved them away from cotton. Earthjustice and its beekeeper clients also argue that the EPA’s science doesn’t dig deep enough to consider the true effects of neonics on bees. “You can think about bees in two ways. You can think of individual bees or you can think of the colony, the superorganism,” MacGregor-Forbes says.

The EPA has only measured the amount of a given poison that will kill an individual bee or many individual bees, but has neglected the overall effect on the colony. A decision on sulfoxaflor could come before the end of 2014, though the Ninth Circuit is not known for its speed. It may be a close call—courts generally give considerable deference to agencies like the EPA when the argument is over science. [Ed. Note: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on September 10, 2015, vacating the EPA’s unconditional registration of sulfoxaflor, and remanding for the EPA to obtain further studies and data regarding the effects of sulfoxaflor on bees, as required by EPA regulations.] Beekeeper Jeff Anderson checks on his bees to make sure the queen bee is producing a healthy brood. View photos » Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice Where Do We Go From Here? Jeff Anderson, the Minnesota-California beekeeper who is a plaintiff on the sulfoxaflor lawsuit, argues that 95 percent of the applications of the neonics are unnecessary and uneconomic.

Zac Browning insists that the switch to genetically modified soybeans and corn must be reversed. And there are far more benign pest control strategies. The benefits of getting off the pesticide bandwagon would be enormous: more honey (there’s a worldwide shortage at present), more reliable pollination of fruit and nut trees and vegetables, less chance of harm to humans and a myriad species of wildlife. And less chance that that lovely shrub you planted to help the bees in your neighborhood will actually be a killer of bees and other productive insects. Alyssa Anderson, daughter of beekeeper Jeff Anderson, holds a baby bee. Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice At least one city—Eugene, Oregon—has outlawed the use of the neonics; others could follow. States could step up as well, as Earthjustice is asking California to do. And it’s conceivable that the EPA could do the right thing. The agricultural chemicals industry is extremely powerful and influential, but if Europe can ban neonics, why can’t we? BioKIDS - Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species, Apidae, bumble bees and honey bees: INFORMATION Skip directly to main content .

Kids' Inquiry of Diverse Species bumble bees and honey bees Apidae Diversity The family Apidae is made up of over 25,000 species of bees in 4,000 genera. ( Gauld and Bolton, 1988 ; Michener, 2000 ) What do they look like? Adult bees are short stout insects. They are fuzzier than their relatives the wasps and the ants. They have chewing mouthparts, four wings, and straight antennae. Most of them have yellow and black stripes, but some are bright green, and some are all black. Most bees can give a painful sting. Bee larvae and pupae are never found outside their nest. Bee larvae look like grubs, with soft white bodies, no legs and brown heads. Honey bee queens are larger than other members of their colony, with workers being the smallest and male drones ranging in the middle. Other Physical Features female larger Where do they live? There are thousands of species of Bees all around the world. Bees can and do live in almost kind of climate. The only places bees do not live are in places with extreme cold all year round.

In Michigan there are probably nearly 200 species. Biogeographic Regions native What kind of habitat do they need? Apidae species live anywhere there are flowers to feed from. Some bumble bees can tolerate very cold temperatures and live in the far north and high in the mountains. These animals are found in the following types of habitat swamp How do they grow? Bees are holometabulous insects. This means that they undergo complete metamorphosis, passing through egg, larval, and pupal stages before emerging as an adult. Eggs are elongate, white, gently curved, and have a soft membranous shell. In social species, eggs are not laid with any food as workers begin to feed larvae as soon as they hatch. In solitary species, eggs are laid upon or near a food source enclosed in a cell with the larvae. Larvae are soft, whitish and grublike. They grow quickly, molting about four times as they mature. The honeybee has 5 larval instars (molts). Cleptoparasitic taxa hatch from the egg with a large sclerotized head and long curved mandibles, which they use to kill the host larvae or egg.

They then begin to eat the hosts’ food source, and after the first molt take on the normal grublike appearance of other bee larvae. Apidae larvae are unable to defecate as there is no connection between the midgut and hindgut. In solitary bees, after the larval food source is gone the bee will defecate, and then almost immediately pupate. Many bee larvae spin silken cocoons for themselves. Fertalized eggs develop into females while unfertalized eggs develop into males. After mating, the female stores the sperm in her spermatheca. Mating only one time will give her enough sperm for the rest of her life. As an egg pass down her oviduct, she controls whether it gets fertilized, by allowing whether or not sperm can exit the spermatheca as the egg passes. For more information, see the information on their close relatives, ants and wasps ( Hymenoptera ). ( Michener, 2000 ) Development - Life Cycle metamorphosis How do they reproduce? Some males fly over or around flowers, literally pouncing on females in order to mate with them. Copulation lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes at most.

A male will grasp the female with his legs and sometimes his mandibles in order to hold on while they copulate. Many female bees only mate once, and males compete to get at them first. Some males even dig down into the soil to encounter a virgin female as she emerges from her larval cell. Most males bees are able to mate multiple times, although Meliponini and Apini male genitalia is torn away during copulation, after which the male soon dies. Some females that regularly mate more than once are found in the genus Panurgus . ( Michener, 2000 ; Ramel, 2005 ; Michener, 2000 ; Ramel, 2005 ) Mating System eusocial Most bee species are solitary nesters. The female makes a tiny bee-sized chamber for each of her offspring, lays one egg, and supplies the chamber with a ball of pollen and nectar for the baby bee to eat. Then she seals up the chamber and builds another one. Some bees, like bumble bees and honey bees, are more social and build nests or hives.

In social bee species, a single queen lays the eggs, while most of her daughters don't reproduce but stay with their mother and help take care of more and more sisters (on average, 60 thousand). Some of the sisters are raised to be new queens, and they and their brothers fly away in the summer to mate and start new nests. ( von Frisch, 1950 ) Most bees are solitary nesters. Solitary bees construct their own nests, stocking each brood cell with a ball of pollen and nectar before laying one egg, sealing the cell, and building another. Solitary bees generally dye or leave before their offspring mature. When solitary bees do not leave before their offspring mature, but continue to feed and care for them, they are called subsocial bees. A colony is made up of 2 or more adult females, regardless of their social relationship. We usually think of a colony in terms of having many workers (all sisters), which do all of the foraging, brood care, guarding, and building, and one queen who is responsible for all egg laying.

This is in fact the life of many honeybees ( Apis , Trigona , Melipona ), and they are considered to be highly eusocial. The queen is completely dependant on her workers, and new colonies are started by social swarms, which fly as a group to a new area never leaving a queen by herself. Other bees live in much smaller colonies such as bumblebees (Bombini), sweat bees ( Halictidae ) and carpenter bees (Xylocopinae). Their colonies begin with a single reproductive female who carries out all tasks of nest maintenance including foraging, brood care, and egg laying. After the emergence of daughters, colonial life and a division of labor between the foundress (queen) and her daughters may arise. These colonies are called primitively eusocial colonies. Often, the queen is larger than her workers, but this is not a constant rule. Bee nests are made up of brood cells, usually with one egg laid in each cell. Most Bombus species however, lay a cluster of eggs together in a wax cell. Cells are made of wax, or dug into wood, soil, plant stems, or mortar.

The most complex bee nests are made by Meliponini species, where clusters (combs) of wax brood cells are surrounded by layers of wax or resin food storage chambers, which are further surrounded by layers of wax mixed with resin or mud to protect the colony inside. Other types of colonies include 2 or more reproductive females who each provision their own egg cells. This is called communal nesting. Most species that make communal nests also have individuals who nest alone. Communal nests can be made up of many species. It is not uncommon to find both solitary bees and wasps nesting communally together. This is especially common in areas where suitable nesting habitat is difficult to find, so individuals nest together in the only suitable areas available. The largest recorded communal nest aggregation was 423,000 bees covering 1300m squared. Solitary bees tend to line their brood cells with a waterproofing material to protect developing offspring. This material can be wax, pieces of leaves and petals, or varnish-like and made from saliva.

( Gauld and Bolton, 1988 ; Michener, 2000 ; Ramel, 2005 ; von Frisch, 1950 ) Key Reproductive Features Breeding season Spring or Summer Solitary female bees don't tend their babies after they close up their chamber. Bee species that form nests don't seal up the larvae, instead they feed and take care of them as they grow. Male bees never take care of offspring and do very little work. Parental Investment female parental care How long do they live? Solitary bees hatch in the summer or fall and spend the winter in their nest. They emerge in the spring or summer to reproduce and then die. Among social bees, queen bees can live for several years. The workers usually live just a few weeks or months, although some live through the winter. Male bees usually live a few months at most, and often die shortly after mating. ( Michener, 2000 ) How do they behave? Many bee species (called robber bees) are parasitic upon other bee species. These bees eat the stored food meant for the host larvae, starving or even directly killing the host.

Most bees forage during the day, whenever it is warm enough. Honeybees build large hives out of wax, high up in trees or cliffs. Bumblebees make smaller nests in holes underground, usually abandoned mammal burrows. Almost any kind of protected niche can be used by bees as a nesting site, such as beetle bored cavities in timber, holes in walls or hollow trees, snail shells, or under rocks. Some use abandoned bird nests, dead plant stems, or may tunnel into the mortar of houses and walls. A few bees are nocturnal, and specialize on collecting pollen from certain night blooming flowers. Perdita species collect pollen only from evening primroses and their close relatives, and members of the cucumber family are frequented by Xenoglossa . In order to see better at night, nocturnal bees tend to have larger eyes and darker coloring. ( Gauld and Bolton, 1988 ; Michener, 2000 ; Ramel, 2005 ) Key Behaviors chemical What do they eat? Adult bees drink nectar and eat pollen, while larvae eat pollen, nectar, honey, and pollen or floral oils.

Pollen is collected by the female parent in solitary species, or by the foundress and or workers in colonies. Females collect pollen on branched body hairs, which are later transferred to the scopa (carrying structure), generally located on the hind legs. An exception to this are the Hylaeus , which are hairless and lack scopa, instead transporting pollen in their crops. Bees normally collect dry pollen which is naturally sticky, but some bees mix pollen with regurgitated nectar to maximize its sticky qualities. In taxa that have scopa to carry the pollen, nectar is carried in the crop, and is then refined to make honey. Some bees collect floral oils instead of nectar. When a female returns to her nest she regurgitates her crop full of nectar or oil into a honey pot or preconstructed cell for storage. ( Gauld and Bolton, 1988 ) Primary Diet insect-eating birds What roles do they have in the ecosystem? Bees are essential to the survival of many ecosystems, as without them many plants could not reproduce. Bees pollinate more plants than any other insect.

They are so important, that many species of solitary bees in the family Megachile are farmed and cared for because of their importance in pollinating commercial crops. Some plants have developed clever ways to trick bees into pollinating them. Certain orchids (Ophrys) emit pheromones similar to those of female Andrea , Anthophora , Colletes , Eucera , Tetralonia , and other bees. Males smell the pheromones and are attracted to the flowers thinking that they are female bees. As the male tries to mate with the flower, he pollinates it at the same time. ( Ramel, 2005 ; Gauld and Bolton, 1988 ; Ramel, 2005 ) Ecosystem Impact pollinates Do they cause problems? Bees sting to protect themselves. They usually aren't dangerous, but large hives might sting a person enough times to endanger them, and some people are so allergic to bee stings that they can die from just one or a few stings. Ways that these animals might be a problem for humans injures humans bites or stings How do they interact with us?

Bees are very important to the production of fruits and vegetables, and other crops such as flax, cotton, alfalfa and clover. Without bees, most crops could not be grown. The pollination industry is worth millions every year. Bees also provide wax, honey, bee pollen, propolis (used in cough syrups) and royal jelly. ( Michener, 2000 ; Ramel, 2005 ) Ways that people benefit from these animals: Nectar collection by honey bees - Honey Bee Suite Honey Bee Suite Nectar collection by honey bees Nectar collection by honey bees While folks envision industrious honey bees bringing home loads of silken nectar, they often don’t account for the other payloads that arrive on the landing board. Honey bees actually collect three other substances: pollen, water, and propolis. Today’s post is a brief overview of nectar collection. Later I’ll write about the other three. Nectar is usually secreted from glands called floral nectaries that are found in various places in a flower depending on the species. They are usually found at the base, but may also be on the sepals, petals, or stamens.

While foraging bees climb deep inside the flower looking for the sweet liquid, pollen sticks to the bee’s body. On any given foraging trip, honey bees tend to visit only one species of flower. As she travels from flower to flower she inadvertently picks up more pollen grains while some of the previous ones rub off on the anthers of the next flower. Quite accidentally—at least from the bee’s perspective—cross pollination has occurred. It is believed that flowering plants co-evolved with bees. The plants that survived where the ones that produced the sweetest, most attractive nectar. Since the bees were more attracted to these plants, they were the plants most likely to get pollinated and produce the next generation. This phenomenon is what biologists call a plant-pollinator mutualism: the plant benefits from the bee and the bee benefits from the plant and they both evolve to work ever-more-closely together. Some mutualisms are so specific that one and only one particular species can pollinate a particular type of flower. These mutualisms have garnered much attention recently because the extinction of one of the partners means the automatic extinction of the other.

Over the course of about 80 million years, flowers have developed other specialized ways to attract bees including colorful petals, distinctive patterns called “honey guides,” and landing platforms—widened or fused lower petals that make a visit easier for the bee. Many of the patterns are ultraviolet—unseen by humans but extremely attractive to the pollinators. The bees, in turn, developed tube-like mouthparts that can reach deep into a flower like a straw, brushy bodies that collect pollen, and bristly legs that can be used like combs to remove pollen from their abdomens. The nectar is swallowed into an organ known as the “honey stomach,” a part of the esophagus that expands as it fills. Once the honey stomach is full the bee returns to the hive where the payload is transferred to a waiting worker in a process called trophallaxis. Once in the hands—okay, the honey stomach—of an in-hive worker, the long process of converting nectar into honey begins. Rusty Honey bee pollinator mix contains seeds, mulch, and fertilizer. Non-GMO. Where Are Your Hives?

Honey Bee Suite has added this globe of the world in order to help give us a better understanding of where our beekeepers and hives are located. Each time someone visits or leaves a comment their location will appear on the map. Proving you are not alone, beekeeping is a bee-autiful global community. Mission Statement Honey Bee Suite is dedicated to honey bees, beekeeping, wild bees, other pollinators, and pollination ecology. It is designed to be informative and fun, but also to remind readers that pollinators throughout the world are endangered. Although they may seem small and insignificant, pollinators are vital to anyone who eats. Copyright Notice Unless otherwise noted, all text and images appearing on HoneyBeeSuite.com are © Rusty Burlew 2010-2017 and may not be used without prior permission.

Question: What is collected by bees?
Answer: Nectar